Talk:Andrea Dworkin/Archive 4

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I'm a little bit confused. The article text states in two places that the Paris drug-rape happened in 1999, but the "Numbered Short Articles" section suggests that "The day I was drugged and raped" was published in 1996. What gives? -ikkyu2 (talk) 16:27, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

The date listed in the "Numbered Short Articles" section is surely incorrect. The article was published in The New Statesman on June 5, 2000 [1]. I don't know where whoever authored the "Numbered Short Articles" section got the year 1996. In fact, I don't know where whoever authored the section got the "numbers" attached to each article. ASIN is an internal product identification from Amazon.com, and I'm having trouble identifying where if anywhere Amazon.com lists the articles listed in this section. Anyone know what's going on with this section? Radgeek 05:18, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

POV tag removed

given the improvements I've removed the tag. NPOV tags should be used very sparingly. They are not a good look for an encyclopedia, particularly for an article getting media attention. pls disucss specifics if you want to replace tag Mccready 16:32, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

You've done ** what **?? The "improvements" may be numerous but they are largely insubstantial, do not address the main issues in this hagiography to a preacher of hate, and the tag certainly needs to be there, if this article needs to be here at all which I doubt -- it is largely written by an indefatigueable semi-professional Dworkin campaigner with his own I-love-Andrea website. Your little snips and suggestions are completely ineffectual against the never-ending propaganda onslaught. (I see that the low smear of associating Larry Flynt with Dworkin's unbelieveable remarks promoting incest is still there -- its's like saying, "Pol Pot never embraced her for her contributions to society.") By the way, it flatly violates Wikipedia's standards to have this Dworkin promoter mis-using the system to advertise her. What ** you ** are doing by removing the tag is rewarding this serial, bullying, never-ending revert abuse. The abuser waits you out, and you tire, and ** remove the tag! ** Why on earth do you knowingly let it go on? Under these dread circumstances, it raises Wikipedia's credibility, and does not lower it, to note the very serious concern -- all the more so if there is a risk (heaven forbid) that it will be quoted by the media. Mare Nostrum 20:33, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

image request

Can we have a photograph or something of Dworkin? --ScienceApologist 19:25, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

They probably don't want to put one up, the sight of her is a terrible and awesome thing. --24.131.209.132 20:59, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

I put one up, do we have a disturbing picture warning? 129.10.245.23 21:15, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Here's the pic to use: [http://www.economist.com/people/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3909302 Mare Nostrum 20:55, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I couldn't access the above-linked picture because logging in requires an email address, not just a user id. If the community desires a fierce image of Dworkin, I am sure there is a better candidate somewhere on the web than the current image, which to me does not respectfully present her. There are crops of the pics below and more to be found by scrolling through Google Image's pages. I don't know about the legality of using Google-found images on Wikipedia, but they've been reproduced other places. Here are some suggestions (all found using Google Image search):

http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/blog/DWORKIN_ANDREA.jpg

http://usera.imagecave.com/jmkinnard/feminism/Dworkininher20s.jpg

http://www.rodneyanonymous.com/archives/fatpig.jpg

http://toutesegaux.free.fr/IMG/jpg/DWORKIN_ANDREA_4.jpg

She is best known for...

This is complete bunk. If Andrea or her worshippers could impose what she would be known for, this is what they would say, yes. anti-porn campaigner. But she isn't known for it at all. NOT AT ALL!!! Who even remembers anti-porn campaigning?! That is why you don't have a cite for it, much less a credible one, because it isn't true. Dworkin is well known, however, best known as virulent misandrist, perhaps the fiercist man-hating polemicist ever to shame Western society. That is her legacy. That is what she is known for. Being a bigot. If she were attacking any other group than men she would be imprisoned in any number of jurisdictions for hate crimes. Mare Nostrum 20:33, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Mare Nostrum, you have provided no evidence other than your own unverified assertions [oh, pshaw! Mare Nostrum 20:55, 9 March 2006 (UTC)] -- which is to say, no evidence at all that matters for the purposes of editing the WikiPedia article, that Andrea Dworkin is not best remembered as an anti-pornography campaigner. I will repeat what I stated above a month ago in reply to your attempts to delete this from the introductory paragraph and replace it with your own POV ranting. You may notice several explicit citations in defense of my claim. Your recent response did not address any of these; you merely re-asserted that you do, indeed, think that she is not best remembered as an anti-pornography campaigner.

The following edit is shameless POV. From the first paragraph; emphasis mine:

She is best known for her bombastic polemics (e.g., "Under patriarchy, every woman's son is her betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman.").

But you are not denying that she said this most appalling example of hate-speech, right? Is this what you were trying to get at when you included delirium in the piece about her being up for the Nobel Prize for Literature? Where are the ** editors ** on that anyway? It's too funny to be upset about! NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE!!!! WHAAHHHHH!!!!!Mare Nostrum 20:55, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Oh, by the way, better hope the Nobel committee doesn't catch Maureen Mullarkey's review if the consider Andrea's oeuvre:[2] "Andrea Dworkin and Catharine A. MacKinnon are not interested in clarifying issues...they prefer obfuscation and shock tactics. Intercourse and Feminism Unmodified should be read solely for clues to the crudity of the authors' assault on the First Amendment. This is lock-step, völkisch theorizing spun from the tribal myth of male depravity. With the dictatorial arrogance of traditional censors, the High Command disdains information and truthful discussion. (At an April 4 conference at New York University, titled Sexual Liberals and the Assault on Feminism, Dworkin trashed "the free market of ideas" because it does not guarantee that "good" ideas will win.)...Both books are ritual performances, hokey rallying points for the real agenda: the polarization of women along lines of sexual preference. Pure feminists (lesbians and nice asexuals) on one side of the sex code, collaborators on the other...Both books travesty debate with a pornography of their own: the reduction of men to their erections and the depiction of heterosexuality as vicious and degrading." Gee, I never heard of a book like that winning in Stockholm!

As though Mullarkey were somehow able to read our unfortunate Wikipedia draft, she cautioned, "Beware the party hacks who chirp encomiums to her "elegant" and "lyrical" prose. Dworkin lives in "Amerika," where "violation is a synonym for intercourse," and "incestuous rape is becoming a central paradigm for intercourse in our time."

It's also factually absurd. Dworkin reached the national stage [nah, sorry, that was then and this is now Mare Nostrum 20:55, 9 March 2006 (UTC)] as an activist against pornography and Pornography: Men Possessing Women remains very clearly one of her most widely-read books.

She is not famous for her "widely read" (?!!) books, sorry again. A number are out of print. The first thing her defenders wail about (playing the odds against this) is, "Have you read her work?!" Unfortunately, at least a few have (see below), and it isn't a pretty sight! Yow! Mare Nostrum 20:55, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

She was best known as a critic of pornography (which I actually think is rather unfortunate, for reasons that aren't worth digging into here); you might, for example, notice that her anti-pornography work is mentioned in either the first paragraph or the tagline of nearly every press obituary or column on her death ([3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], ...).

What this indicates is that the press release at the time of her death made this false claim, that's all. Mare Nostrum 20:55, 9 March 2006 (UTC) It may also be true that among a coterie of man-haters of the day, this is the image of herself that the morbidly obese minanthrope promoted. Camille Paglia, though, thought Dworkin was more trying to promote herself as an oracle of truth: "Dworkin pretends to be a daring truth-teller," wrote the feminist Camille Paglia, "but never mentions her most obvious problem, food."[10]

The two major printed articles that I can find that front-load a mention of her polemical style or its effects on readers are fellow feminist Katharine Viner's column in The Guardian, and the obit for the London Times, which also mentions her anti-pornography work in the tagline before the story even begins.

She is well known far beyond the pages of the Guardian and London Times. She is known everywhere, in the Boston Globe for example, as a "preacher of hate." [11] This is a woman with a big, big reputation, it goes way beyond the man-hating invective that constitute her published works.

I conclude that Dworkin is most remembered for her anti-pornography activism.

Shucks, we never doubted what ** you ** concluded about it, goodness me! Your Dworkin fansite explains all your worship of her along with how you despise anyone that criticizes her, we know. Mare Nostrum 19:59, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

You need to provide better evidence than you have so far if you want to claim that Dworkin is not best remembered as an anti-pornography campaigner.

How about a compromise? You can say, "She is most recognized among fellow misandrists for her anti-pornography campaigning." Or, we can just keep the neutrality disputed label, or best of all, dump this irredeemable article as I wrote earlier. Mare Nostrum 19:59, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry if you're frustrated with the process of editing this article,

Not at all, don't worry about that, I haven't wasted time getting endlessly reverted by you lately. Just don't care to have the process hijacked by a Dworkin propapandist and not go on the record about it. Mare Nostrum 19:59, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

but I'd also like to note that your tone and attitude are in obvious violation of both WP:CIVIL and WP:AGF.

80.255.59.139 19:47, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Don't make me laugh. A careerist Dworkin propaganda publisher can't write an article on Wikipedia about the bigot -- too close to the subject. You violate Wiki rules every time you edit and serially revert on here.

Well, this ought to even it out a little bit, these people don't much remember her for anti-porn work [12] ("Hatred of women is a source of sexual pleasure for men in its own right." - Dworkin, quoted by Carey Roberts in observing that hatred of men and bigotry have serious negative consequences.)[13] (“Intercourse with men ... means remaining the victim, forever annihilating all self-respect.” - Dworkin), [14](recounting being raised to feel inferior as a male thanks to Dworkin's ilk and delighting in her passing -- Dean, Dean's World), [15] (Misogyny "parallels the despicable way feminists have used victimhood to justify man-hate. One need only to look at the hate-filled feminist head case Andrea Dworkin, reputedly the victim of sexual abuse, to see where this leads." - writer Glenn J. Sacks), [16]("In the late ’sixties and ’seventies, such misanthropic feminists were given full license by academia and the media to preach their man-hating message throughout society...Among the two most vociferous champions of feminist misanthropy were Germaine Greer and her American counterpart, the lately deceased Andrea Dworkin" - David Conway, Civitas)

[17] ("An odd thing about this pathetic mixed-up creature is that if you read her Autobiography carefully, it becomes clear that her man-hating style was actually misdirected rage at her mother." - writer David A. Roberts, beginning lengthy exegesis of Dworkin's acute misandry, without a mention of anti-porn), [18] ("Unfortunately for Dworkin, once you sit down and read her work in depth she comes across as far more bizarre than even the occasionally out-of-context quotes from her writing makes her appear." - writer Brian Carnell, full article does not mention porn), [19] ("I want to see a man beaten to a bloody pulp with a high-heel shoved in his mouth, like an apple in the mouth of a pig." - Dworkin, featured in, A Misandry Sampler (including eight anti-male slurs by Dworkin, more than by any other bigot listed), assembled by G. Shrock), [20] ("Fortunately, one reviewer at least made Dworkin's perspectives clear: "'Ms. Dworkin advocates nothing short of killing men.'" - Warren Farrell, Ph.D, criticizing New York Times giving excessive coverage to "man-haters like Marilyn French and Andrea Dworkin"; anti-porn activity not recalled), [21]("It’s hilarious the way they try to blow her up. She was one of the most crazed example of male haters have pushed the radical feminist agenda which tries to claim all men are evil." - James D. Hudnall) [22] ("And no one needs to read a volume of Mary Daly or Andrea Dworkin’s apocalyptic prose to get a nasty dose of Woman Good, Man Bad. The misandrist message often reaches us in more mundane forms." - Robert L. Campbell)[23] (It's because of people like Andrea Dworkin that the legitimate cause of equal rights for women became a crusade against men, heterosexuality, and the entire concept of personal responsibility. I have read her work. In spite of her claims, she was a man-hater..."- Anne Haight) [24] "The lovely Ms. Dworkin is best known for her militant antipathy to men" - Van Helsing), [25]("Dworkin might not have actually said "all men are rapists" but she did have the slogan Dead Men Don't Rape above her desk." - Havana Marking, arguing in the Guardian that Dworkin's real legacy is due to her most women today would rather be bitten by a rabid dog than be considered feminists), [26]("Dworkin…has turned a garish history of mental instability into feminist grand opera. She publicly boasts of her bizarre multiple rapes, assaults, beatings, breakdowns and tacky trauma, as if her inability to cope with life were the patriarchy's fault rather than her own. Dworkin's shrill, kvetching, solipsistic prose has a sloppy, squalling infantilism." -- Camille Paglia) [27] The title of Viner’s article is “She never hated men”. Does anyone here believe that is accurate? [...]The idea of a woman-only state is of interest. How would they reproduce? -- JW Holliday)[28] (lengthy Sunday Times article never mentions anti-porn activity), [29] (another lenghty essay noting her countless problems and "disputatious rage" but not recalling any porn activism), and here's a word from Wendy McElroy, horrified by the hate:[30] "Men have been so maligned by our society that they are not taken seriously when they protest. The process began in the mid-70s. In her 1976 book Our Blood, gender feminist Andrea Dworkin wrote, 'Under patriarchy [white male culture], every woman’s son is her potential betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman.' This is what the politically aware mother was supposed to see when she looked down into the face of her newly born son." McElroy might not even know (or care) what the Dworkin psychophants say she was, it is clear from all of the above -- she is a misandrist, a minsanthrope, a lunatic, a bigot, a promoter of violence toward's men, and that is what she is known for. Not third rate polemics posing as policy.

Mare Nostrum 19:59, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

There are a lot of things here that will have to wait until I have more time to respond. However, I would like to note that the lengthy Sunday Times article you just added to your list does mention Dworkin's anti-pornography activism. In fact it mentions it in the first paragraph. Here, look:

Right hails Dworkin sex campaign

Sarah Baxter, New York

THE feminist writer Andrea Dworkin, who died last week aged 58, is being hailed by conservatives and supporters of family values in America for speaking out against casual sex and pornography.

The Havana Marking article from the Guardian also front-loads her work on pornography in paragraph 2 ("But there was a much more important moment when Jenni Murray asked yesterday what Dworkin had actually achieved in her life. It was acknowledged that while pornography was on the increase, at least we could discuss it now"), and plainly states in paragraph 4 that "Dworkin achieved fame for her stance against pornography."

You're not helping your case. Radgeek 09:09, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Please reconsider your approach or find a better way to spend your time.

—Radgeek 21:03, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, this is vintage Dworkin and your handy answer to every ticklish problem: tell the other guy he has no right to speak and to shut his trap. I remember one kindred soul calling Dworkin one of the greatest enemies of the U.S. First Amendment, gee, I guess that *was* an anti-porn reference... Mare Nostrum 19:59, 9 March 2006 (UTC) (UTC)

This has nothing to do with the First Amendment. I am not the cops and you have not even been asked to "shut up," let alone threatened with any kind of harm for not doing so. What I have askedyou to do is to reconsider your tone and approach, which is (among other things) trolling, contemptuous and openly abusive towards me. WP:CIVIL and WP:AGF suggest (rightly, I think) that this is not the best way to go about editing. I'm asking you to keep this in mind. The accusations of censoriousness on my part are your own invention. Radgeek 09:09, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Even so, Cathy Young would have none of it,

"Dworkin's admirers laud, and wildly exaggerate, her role in the battle against domestic violence and rape; if she deserves credit" for anything, it's helping infect feminist activism on these important issues with antimale bigotry and paranoia. Her biggest contribution" to the women's movement was to redirect a lot of its energy into a futile, divisive crusade against pornography." [31] Yeah, the truth hurts. Especially for those who were never in pursuit of the truth to begin with. Mare Nostrum 20:55, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Revisionist dicussion

Mare Nostrum, you have repeatedly used the WikiPedia edit functionality to revise and expand, in place, signed and dated comments that you had previously posted in different form. These are not minor copyedits but substantial revisions of what you had said, after it has already been read and responded to in later comments, with no indication that you are changing the record of what you said. I understand that you have more information that you want to add to the discussion, but the way you're adding it is confusing for later discussion and creates a false sense of what it is that respondents are responding to at a given time.

Please make any additions, self-corrections, etc. beyond simple copyedits (signing a post you left unsigned, etc.) in a separate note further down the page.

Please also try to use indenting to keep the threads of discussion straight. You can do this easily by adding colons at the beginning of each paragraph when you add a response; each colon indents your comments one further level. (E.g.: "Top level," ":Response," "::Response to the response," ":::Third response," etc.)

Thanks. —Radgeek 17:24, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

A Note on Bias

Seminumerical, you have not raised any substative critiques about Dworkin, but have instead indulged in the most base misogyny to ever be published on a Wiki forum. If I am to read your last post correctly, much of the details of Dworkin's biography are "outside [your] fields of interests," which indicates to me that you have no real knowledge of the disciplines that applied to her work. How Dworkin is or is not remembered should be of no import or interest to you.

To everyone else reading this, let me also state that on Wikipedia, the task is not to "deliver the knockout punch" to Dworkin or any person, but to create biographical articles that are as fair, thorough, and factually accurate as possible. You may want to revisit the Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. This is an official policy of Wikipedia.--Pinko1977 00:36, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

A NEUTRAL point of view is exactly what Seminumerical has. Dworkin was a prostitute, besides being a complete wacko, with a DECIDEDLY misanthropic, twisted view of the world. Let's take a look at YOUR OWN thoroughly biased comment: "...the most base misogyny to ever be published on a Wiki forum"? What exactly do you not understand about what constitutes NEUTRAL??? Her sickening lies are "outside of my fields of interest" too, because I am a happily married man of long standing with a young daughter whom I THANK GOD will never know the putrefying stench of Andrea Dworkin infesting her world, as it did mine. Doovinator 04:27, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

These are overt arguments ad hominem from folks who have provided nothing but that, at great length and in lurid detail, who have contributed no substantive work of any kind to the article, and who have openly confessed that they have not done, and do not intend to do, any research so as to make themselves less than ignorant about the people or positions that they are loudly ranting about. You are simply trolling this Talk page with useless rubbish and I suggest you find a less pathetic way to fill your empty time. Radgeek 06:16, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

You are a pseudosophisticated bigot sitting in front of a monitor, pissing in your pocket. I have better things to do. Doovinator 02:19, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorry about provoking this with my poor choice of tone. I am not a troll, just a veteran of 15 years of internet flame wars, which I gather are not acceptable here.

How Dworkin is remembered is of great importance, since her writings caused men to be falsly accused of rape, and diverted police and prosecutorial resources away from genuine cases of rape (this I witnessed at McGill University). Debunking her rants and provocations is simple if one is talking to a person of common sense, but to dismantle her in a way that would be acknowledged by a feminist academic or an armchair philosopher of the left would take scholarship that someone with my background does not have. Who knows who is doing that sort of work? I seem to remember reading essays back in the early or mid 90's, I think in the New York Times, written by another Dworkin (Ronald Dworkin?) that dealt with her on this level. I want to see this done, for the good of young people with impressionable minds that read Wikipedia. I'll look up the other Dworkin if I don't hear back. Seminumerical 06:39, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree completely, Seminumerical, but question the need for a higher standard of scholarship than used by Andrea Dworkin herself. I'm sure made-up statistics will serve very well. They did for her. Doovinator 18:45, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Seminumerical, the following: "Debunking her rants and provocations is simple if one is talking to a person of common sense, but to dismantle her in a way that would be acknowledged by a feminist academic or an armchair philosopher of the left would take scholarship that someone with my background does not have" is simply not the purpose of a WikiPedia article. Sorry. Radgeek 10:20, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

While these two represent an extreme end, referring to published criticism of her "teachings" is certainly within the scope of Wikipedia. --B. Phillips 08:33, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

"Perhaps it was the disputed rape account that emboldened..."

The following sentence:

Perhaps it was the disputed rape account that emboldened even some feminist writers to question her crediblity,[32] and otherwise distance themselves from her views.[33]

Is, as the "Perhaps it was" signals, a half-hearted attempt at original research. Without the citations it would be baseless speculation. With the citations, it is an attempt to determine, rather than simply reporting, the underlying causes behind the author's distancing from Dworkin. Dishonestly so, since the first column reports the Paris rape story as fact rather than questioning it, and the second does not mention it at all. Because it was written before the story was published.

Please do not try to intimidate people away from making edits on the assumption that they won't read the links you your edits with. Radgeek 17:11, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Radgeek, you have taken out evey edit I have put in, systematically, and twice now, and you have the gall to try to accuse me of intimidation. If you want to call me names, send me an e-mail. Dworkin is not a credible figure, not after the 1999 misadventures, almost any more than fabulist James Frey is. Her preposterous account of an alleged rape is not accepted by virtually anyone, except possibly you, even though there exists the most miniscule chance that it could be true. So you can't keep rejecting every formulation of her death that does not reconfirm the dubious position that "the rape" may have caused her death. The *rape she reported* may have caused her death, according to her. Whether you like balance or not, you have to deal with it. And you ought to let other people breathe, too, I think that might be the Wiki way. Mare Nostrum

Radgeek, Mare Nostrum, I hope neither of you will take it amiss if I say that you're both doing good work here, and there's no reason you can't work together on this. Maybe you guys would be willing to consider softening your tone, as a beginning. Is that fair? IronDuke 17:51, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Mare Nostrum, I have not "taken out every edit you have put in." I have no objections, just to pick a couple of examples, to the paragraph on the Meese commission and I have replicated some of the edits you suggested (e.g. replacing "exposed" with "depicted," deleting POV additions, etc.) in the mass of edits that I reverted yesterday. If you would like more constructive work and less reversion, I suggest that (1) you respond to explicit discussion on the Talk page about specific changes that other people have already tried to make before you and others have already objected to, and (2) you make edits in a series rather than bundling together numerous completely unrelated edits on different sections into big masses that make the history hard to follow.

There is no claim, here or from Dworkin, that the rape in Paris caused her death. There is the report of her claim, in her final article for the Guardian, that her health problems were connected with the rape. Note that she did not claim that her health problems were caused by an alleged rape; she alleged that her health problems were caused by an actual rape. This doesn't have anything to do with whether I believe this claim or not (I have no idea whether it's true or not; how would I know?). It has to do with accurately reporting what she said, not mangling it and stomping all over simple matters of grammar, just so that you can make sure you use the word "alleged" or "reported" or "claimed" one more time, just in case we had somehow forgotten that it was used earlier in the sentence, or discussed extensively a couple of paragraphs up.

As for your personal point of view on Dworkin's credibility, or about her reports of being raped in Paris in particular, I couldn't possibly care less; and expressing that POV is explicitly not the purpose of WikiPedia. The specific sentence I noted removing here, with explanation, attempts to draw a connection based on weasel-worded speculation adorned with two links to external articles that have nothing to do with the event you are discussing. If one of your sources reports the rape as fact and the other was written before the account of the rape was published, you can hardly claim them as evidence for the claim that those feminists who distanced themselves from Dworkin did so because of the rape account. If you think you're entitled to engage in that kind of rubbish, or that others aren't entitled to criticize you for engaging in it, then you need to think harder about what you are writing.

Radgeek 18:16, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I am new here, and as a new guy I need some help. Radgeek is now accusing me, in the history, of making a "misrepresentation of fact" in noting that Dworkin's dubious rape account occured/didn't occur during daylight. Misrepresentation is a very serious charge, it means that I stated something false with knowledge of its falsity. It is not indicating that I made a mistake (which we could discuss), it is accusing me of willful fraud, i.e., Radgeek is specifically impugning my character. However, by Dworkin's own words in the Guardian article, ** "it was daylight," ** which is precisely what I said. The reference to dinner which Radgeek breezily misstates is elsewhere and has nothing to do with the "rape," as anyone can see from the most cursory reading of Dworkin's words. Yet this utter carelessness is enough basis for Radgeek to accuse me of a "misrepresentation of fact".

This abuse has to stop. How can I make a formal complaint, please, in Wikipedia, about defamatory mistreatment by Radgeek? (The court procedures available for this defamation I know myself.) Someone please tell me the procedure for a Wikipedia complaint.

As a side note, the daylight drugging and rape of this hideously ugly woman (of all people) was not reported to the police, nor to medical staff, nor to the hotel (all details fiercely dismissed as irrelevant by zealots, I know), and neither does Dworkin **even claim to have memory of it.** It is just somehow true, like all of the other unverifiable misfortunes of her life that our article defiantly states as having occured (bled for days, abused by husband, worked as prostitute) despite Seminumerical's concerns and all attempts to add the mildest qualifiers such as "as she relayed." Meanwhile, inconvenient details like the fact that the "rape" occured in daylight by Dworkin's own words, are routinely and instantly excised, truth be damned. So yes, the neutrality of the text continues to be questioned, unfortunately. Thank you, Mare Nostrum

"It was daylight" refers to when and where she had the drink, not when or where she was raped. She explicitly states that the rape itself happened in her hotel room at dinner-time, not in daylight. Here's her saying so, in the second paragraph of the story:

"Then a boy was in the room with dinner. He had served me the second drink. I tried to get up and I fell against the far wall because I couldn't stand. I signed the cheque, but could barely balance myself. I fell back on to the bed. I didn't lock the door. I came to four or five hours later. I didn't know where I was. The curtains hadn't been drawn. Now it was dark; before it had been light, long before dusk."

And a couple more paragraphs down:

"I couldn't remember, but I thought they had pulled me down toward the bottom of the bed so that my vagina was near the bed's edge and my legs were easy to manipulate. I thought that the deep, bleeding scratches, right leg, and the big bruise, left breast, were the span of a man on top of me. I had been wearing sweatpants that just fell right down. I had been wearing an undershirt. Usually I covered myself, but I had felt too sick to manage it before the boy came in with the dinner. Besides, I don't know how he got inside since the door was dead-bolted. He appeared suddenly, already in."

To claim that Dworkin claimed to have been raped "in daylight" and not in her hotel room is simply to misrepresent the facts whether through the intent to deceive (as I think is unlikely) or through sheer carelessness (as I think is likely). You can clarify this for yourself by reading the articles that you claim to be discussing.

I'm not interested in discussing with you whether Dworkin's claims about what happened to her in Paris are credible or less than credible. Fortunately that is not the purpose of this Talk page anyway. NPOV requires that we discuss the controversy in the article, not that we work out a way to resolve it.

As for "defamation," please spare us the melodrama. Radgeek 08:58, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Mare, I can give you advice about where to go to take this dispute to another level. Before I tell you how to do that, I'd like to give a few cautionary notes. First, I don't think your dispute, such as it is, with Radgeek merits appeal to any Wikipedia "court" at this time. You may disagree. I would also urge caution in your use of phrases such as "(The court procedures available for this defamation I know myself.)" You aren't quite threatening Radgeek with legal action, but you're maybe closer than you want to be. There is a Wikipedia policy against this here: [[34]]

As for dispute resolution, I would first recommend that you start what is called a Request for Comment, which you can make here: [[35]]. This alerts other Wikipedians to a difference of opinion in progress, and invites them to come to this page and give their two cents. If, for some reason, this fails (for example, no one ends up wanting to come to the page to drop a comment, as sometimes happens), and you and Radgeek are still at loggerheads, I would recommend the Mediation Cabal [[36]], which are a group of volunteer mediators (with no power to enforce decisions, just to help iron out differences in a calm way). I just resolved a dispute (partially) with some excellent help from them. I would also be glad to mediate if things get out of hand here (which I don't think they have) but I have been a contributor to this article, so I may not be the best person to do it. Cheers. IronDuke 21:38, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Dispute resolution between Mare Nostrum and Radgeek

IronDuke, I went where you kindly said and it indicated that the first thing I should do is try to settle with the individual, and I also take your suggestion to soften my tone (and took the Wikipedia advice to take a break from the disagreement), so here goes:

(A) Radgeek, I kindly want the word "factual misrepresentation" out of the history, along with the insult "RTFA" from the same line. A better term might be, "disagree with factual interpretation", for example. I do not think your reconstruction of Dworkin's article is conceivably correct (your interepretation of this daylight business baffles me but I won't belabor it here), but if we merely disagree on the interpretation of an article, I kindly offer that Wikiettiquette still does not allow you to accuse me of misrepresentation or permit the eptithet "RTFA" ("Read the F------ Article!").

(B) I won't argue that the statement of her losing credibility needs to be there (but see (C1/C2) below), but I want those two references out of the history [and if it "can't be done" or "the history can't really be changed", then I will have to take this further], at least for the reasons that they are inconsistent with several points of Wikipedia Etiquette (guidance but not "policy"), which see. [37]

Mare, I do not know of any way to edit comments on revisions in the history and I frankly would not be interested in doing so if I did. Dworkin clearly states in the article that she was raped in her hotel room. This is easily gleaned from the article and was widely reported as her claim in other sources (cf. [38], [39], [40], Bennett, Gracen, etc.). I'm sorry if my choice of words offends you, but if you think you are entitled to editorial leniency when make this kind of careless mistake you need to think harder about that. Radgeek 20:27, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

(C1) I also want "reported rape" (or similar) as her allegation of cause of death, not "rape." For us to say, as you have argued repeatedly that we should, that she-alleged-that-the-rape-caused-her-death, means

(i) that we agree that there was a rape, and (ii) she alleged that such undisputed rape caused her death. (It does *not* mean that she alleged that a real rape occcured and also alleged that it killed her.)

That is simply not the implication of the phrase "alleged that X caused Y." Some people allege that the Illuminati cause major political events; my saying so does not commit me to the claim that there is any such elite global conspiracy. Here, however, is my suggestion for avoiding continued conflict: the best thing to do on this point is simply to quote Dworkin making the claim in her Guardian column. E.G.: "I blame the drug-rape that I experienced in 1999 in Paris. I returned from Paris and finished Scapegoat over a period of months while caring for my dying father. Shortly after he died I was in hospital, delirious from a high fever, with infection and blood clots in my legs" or "Doctors tell me that there is no medical truth to my notion that the rape caused this sickness or what happened after it. I believe I am right: it was the rape. They don't know because they have never looked." It can hardly be disputed that Dworkin both claims that she was raped and also claims that that caused her health problems (please note, again that she does not claim it caused her death; how could she, unless she were prophesying?). Is that better? Radgeek 20:27, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

So that is not a fair position for us to take, since few (though their opinion must be respected) believe that she was raped or that her article even established such on its own terms. As you quoted above, she actually says "I couldn't remember", so even *she* is not testifying that any rape occured, whether or not we think that it did. Further, I don't see how "reported rape" or similar is demeaning to her if phrased properly.

The issue isn't whether "reported rape" or similar is demeaning to her; it's that some editors' mania for putting "alleged" and "reported" in front of everything makes hash of the grammar of the sentence in this particular case. I have been more impatient than I should be with you over this issue because it has come up repeatedly and was already discussed by me on the Talk page at the time you made the edit. I apologize for being short with you, but I hope that you can understand my frustration.

As for the rest, (1) it's untrue that Dworkin didn't state that a rape occurs; what she stated is that a rape occurred while she was suffering from the effects of amnesiac drugs, and she inferred this from several physical signs of having been drugged (passing out, the odd taste of the drink, etc.) and having been raped (unexplained wounds, etc.), and (2) you do not know, or at least have not explained how you know, that "few ... believe that she was raped." Have you done surveys? You should avoid claims like this about relative preponderance if you haven't got a documented basis for them. Radgeek 20:27, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

(C2) Now, if she lied about/or imagined/or fantacized/or got confused about/or "memory-recovered" that (as most who have read her article (even including many of her defenders) believe, and which *she herself seemed even to state* (("couldn't remember"))... Well, then to me (and evidently to Seminumerical), that casts doubt on all her other "bled for days"/beaten in prison/worked as prostitute/abused by husband, as well. That is what is so chilling about her rape account. That when you read it, and look at the picture of a woman who was (by then) of such ghastly ugliness, sort-of-alleging it, if you are like most people (maybe not you), then you realize that it is simply beyond belief. *And then you wonder what else not to believe of her claimed background.*

This is at the very best original research on your (or Seminumerical's) part. It is, as a matter of explicit policy, not the purpose of WikiPedia to provide a primary forum for it.

I am also going to ask you to please stop leaning on Dworkin's physical appearance. Besides being deliberately insulting to her on your part, it is also completely irrelevant to the topic. Have you done, or read any research on the physical appearance of women who are raped? Do you have any objective reason at all to cattily suggest that Dworkin probably would not be raped because you find her so distinctly unattractive? This is, frankly, a sleazy tactic and you ought to be ashamed that you indulged in it. Radgeek 20:27, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Just how does she, having made a career of such strident invective, decide that something happened to her, if "couldn't remember" and "lost hours" are enough of a basis for her to allege **rape?** Does she have a whole different system of knowledge that we do? (How is this different from someone who "realizes" that they were probed by space aliens, and isn't it actually much the same story?) So then I also think that some driest, respectful modifiers should be put in about these other misfortunes as well, "she reported", "as she relayed", "she told of", and if we don't put these in I don't think that's being fair, unless we have some corroborating evidence beyond her own writings and what she may have told others about them. Merely ripping out all of the qualifiers that I wrote (twice you did this along with your other numerous excisions) is also not Wiki Etiquette as the above reference also notes. And I kindly suggest that I don't need to have proof that her accounts were wrong, to propose that for a woman whose credibility/epistemology is *so* questioned we have the mildest, respectful modifiers such as "she told of" instead of having her accounts stated as fact.

This has been addressed above. In biographical writing there is a presumption in favor of taking the subject at her own word in the account of her life. If there are documented reasons for doubts about some specific aspect of her autobiographical statements then you should feel free to discuss those doubts from a neutral point of view and to qualify her claims in light of that, as has been done with her statements about being raped in Paris. If not then you are merely using repeated arch qualifiers to suggest that anything she said about herself ought to be doubted, without giving grounds for the doubt. (What grounds would you have? That you are a more reliable authority on what happened to Andrea Dworkin than Andrea Dworkin is?) If you would like to make clear that certain statements are taken from Dworkin's own testimony, a better way for you to do this would be to add explicit citations of Dworkin's own work (such as her memoir, Heartbreak, or the numerous references in her speeches and essays, many of which are collected online at the Andrea Dworkin Online Library). Radgeek 20:27, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

So my perspective: in sum, (A) and (B) above require the same action, and so then which of (A/B), (C1) and (C2) can we kindly resolve now? Thank you, Mare Nostrum 15:23, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

I see that the claim I made a "misrepresentation" and RTFA are still in the history.

Okay, I am not going to pursue this conciliation thing any more, I tried and it's a waste, and I'll go back to boldly but faithfully editing. None of the five articles that Radgeek offers to substantiate that our ugly, obese, and perhaps insane [41] misandrist was raped, begin to do that in any way. The best information is in Dworkin's own account, which does not do so either. And now, thanks to Radgeek's above contribution, we see that her doctors rejected her androphobic hypothesis that the her unlikely "rape" of five years before debiliated her. Thus, the right thing to do about that in the enyclopedia is to delete Dworkin's unsupportable raving that it caused her illnesses, and not to explicate her delusions. It is a good point that a writer's own account should be giving preference absent other evidence, but neither should we cast doubt on famous fabulists like Calamity Jane (or Russia's Vladimir Zhirinovsky), if we are always to accept the writer's word in the absence of real evidence. Like those people, Dworkin has rebutted the presumption of her truthfulness by showing herself to be non-credible, even among feminists.

The sanctimonious reproving of my pointing out Dworkin's ugliness, is part of the repressive Dworkin tradition and (apart from being condescending) it shows her strong influence on American culture: the First Amendment is revoked in favor of political correctness. Still, her physical repulsiveness is something any jury would rightly take into account in judging the plausibility of her ludicrous rape claim, which would make it only the more preposterous. Even though they would mull that (as but a small detail in a tapestry of incredibility), they might, in their deliberations, refrain from pointing it out orally: they might mince words in that dishonest way, having been cowed by censors like Dworkin. But I won't. Mare Nostrum 18:55, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

# I did not suggest that the stories proved that Dworkin was raped in Paris. As I stated earlier, I am not even remotely interested in debating the topic with you (nor is it the purpose of WikiPedia to get us to agree one way or the other on the subject for the purpose of the article). What I explicitly cited those articles for, deliberately including articles from both supporters and doubters, is to support my contention that what Dworkin said is that she was raped in her hotel room, not "in daylight," a frankly bizarre misreading on your part that you incorrectly edited the entry to reflect. I have no interest in trying to mangle the discussion of the controversy over Dworkin's articles or to rewrite it in a way that presupposes the truth of Dworkin's account. I do have an interest in accurately reporting what Dworkin said about the attack. Your tirade on this point is, thus, based on a simple misunderstanding.

# As I already also stated, I know of no way to remove the comments from the edit history and I wouldn't be particularly interested in doing so if I did know a way. Sorry.

# Dworkin's comments about her own illness are salient to giving an account of her life, whether you think she is right or not. If you simply delete the passage I will consider this plain vandalism and revert it as soon as I notice it.

# This has nothing to do with the First Amendment. There are no censors and nobody with any government authority at all involved in this discussion. What I'm asking you to do is not be a loud-mouthed nitwit. Your opinions about Dworkin's appearance have exactly nothing at all to do with the process of editing this article, and insisting on the point does nothing other than waste your own time with the pettiest sort of cruelty, and mine with reading such trash. On second thought, it does do one more thing: it shows that you have done absolutely nothing to make yourself less than ignorant about sexual assault, and that it is probably a perfect waste of time for me to try to tease out any objective reasons that you might have for insisting on the point. That's useful information for me, I suppose, but perhaps not the information that you were intending to convey.

I appreciate the constructive work (such as the material on the Meese Commission testimony) that you have contributed to this article. But a number of your edits have been unhelpful, and your melodramatic posturing on this Talk page does not change that. Nor is your cause helped when you resolutely misread points explicitly stated in simple words. —Radgeek 01:26, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

"Still, her physical repulsiveness is something any jury would rightly take into account in judging the plausibility of her ludicrous rape claim, which would make it only the more preposterous. "

Rape is an act of violence, not of passion. Therefore the physical appearance of a person does not play into the probability that they will be/have been raped. Brutallittlebroad 05:44, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

dude, the 70s to early 90s are long over. "Rape is an act of violence, not of passion" was a political statement not a scientific or criminological conclusion. So what are ya gonna do? Amongst our ancestors attractive women were preferentially raped. Care to find a contrary study, not written by a lawyer or a liberal arts major? No? what? you can't find one? What about our aboriginal contemporaries? Think raping the unattractive is a sport? Even the drugged up Liberian or Sierra Leonean killers don't seem to be hunting down the fat, the hairy, or the grandmothers (for rape that is, murder and degredation is fine). Take your sly white ass back to the upper middle class neighborhood you grew up in. Seminumerical 03:10, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

"MacDworkin", "Feminazi"...

Ever heard those terms? You won't in this article. MacDworkin pulls about about 200 hits on Google alone, it's a widely recognized term in critiquing misandry. And guess where it comes from? The slang invective "Feminazi" generally refers to a particularly virulent form of misandry, and the consensus is that one of Dworkin's life achievements was to serve as the inspiration for this pejorative. That's right, the term refers to *her* in particular. Want to learn more? You won't do so by reading here. Then there's "gender feminist," a polite euphemism that means anti-male bigot. Feminist academics freely categorize Dworkin as a "gender feminist," and again, she seemingly is the modern archetype for the term. (See, she *is* known much more broadly than for some long forgotten, failed anti-porn efforts!) And that's another thing you won't be informed of by reading our slanted little piece. Mare Nostrum 21:50, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

---

Sorry but NPOV doesn't mean that we must include evrything anyone said about a given topic.

This is not an article about Dworkin's retractors, however many or correct they might or might not be, but about her, in an encyclopedic sense. Anything that is not part of her biography or bibliography falls outside of the scope of the article. And this article must conform to NPOV,

Besides, "feminazi" is hardly a neutral description, anyone would agree.

If you want, for example, create a page on her critics, and put it as a "see also". You can also go to the Feminazi page and try to include her in a list of Feminazis. (no doubt that it will get edited out, as it is still not NPOV, but it would at least be relevant!)

Be a wikipedian! --Cerejota 05:12, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

So where is our unfortunate article headed?

As before, this is what is going to happen now.

1. The principal author has his own site in which he tells us how much he celebrates Dworkin and reviles her critics -- he is a very tenacious editor (sometime pugnacious -- liberally uses the word "sleazy" to discuss moves he doesn't agree with). Anyway, he also sporadically makes limited efforts to be balanced and that has to be acknowledged, but it isn't nearly enough and he is a revert fiend. His epistemology is wacked -- the way he knows things is because the androphobe or her fellow man-haters said them. He leaves ludicrous things in his prose about the misandrist getting the Nobel Prize for Literature (repeat, *Literature*!), and when she embraces incest (and even incest with children), he manages to somehow blame that on on Larry Flynt. One small tenacity example: he reverted numerous times to how she "condemned" criminal prosecutions for pornography, even though it was shown in black and white that she herself proposed *new* criminal laws against it in the very reference he was misquoting. So, could we at least stretch to the truth toward his POV angle but just say that she "criticized" or "disfavored" criminal sanctins instead of the absurdist "condemned"? Nope, truth be damned, it had to be that she "condemned" them, even though what she was supposedly "condemning" was her own proposal. Pretty tiring. *SheI never said "condemn" or anything similar BTW; our author insisted on the hyperbolic mischaracterization.

2. Stuarta tried to get the author to remove the Flynt smear -- again, no dice.

3. The main author is not going to leave this editing process even though he is too close to subject and can't participate under Wiki rules. He will parse through what he agrees with and disagrees with, and he thinks it through, he will realize as usual that he is right and that those who disagree are wrong (or their actions "sleazy").

4. He'll agree to small changes that don't substantially affect the content, but no more, and otherwise defiantly and repeatedly revert as necessary.

5. Some good-hearted person will mistakenly thank him for his "flexiblity" in making petty changes while digging in his heels/recalcitrantly reverting as to all meaningful ones.

6. More incisive editors will tire of the fruitless effort to control the bad situation in the face of such intransigence.

7. With others too exhausted to improve the article against the obstreperousness, after a short interval some good-hearted person will again come along and remove the POV tag.

8. The resulting article will be propagandistic and approved with the Wiki seal.

N.B. Don't even dream, please, of comparing me with the author. I don't have a Dworkin hate site (and have never written about her formally or informally except here); he does have a Dworkin love site. He is on the record as to how highly he regards her and how little he thinks of her critics. P.S. Also kindly don't suggest that all I need to is edit the article, I have tried and it doesn't do any good as in No. 4 and 6 above. Mare Nostrum 21:50, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Hey, don't feel you're alone in the wilderness, Mare Nostrum. The depth of my disgust for The Prostitute is exceeded only by the incalculable harm she accomplished in her blessedly short life, but I have no desire to write anything at all about the Fat Pig. I will, however, maintain the NPOV tag hung over her gravestone until the end of time or hell freezes over, whichever comes first. Doovinator 04:27, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

In other words, you are admitting to vandalizing? Keeping an POV tag just for the hell of it is a form of vandalism. You cheapen the usefulness and relevancy of an important community tool by doing so.

Doovinator: I am officially, as a fellow wikipedian, asking you to stop vandalizing this page in this manner. If you have relevant edits, by all means do them, but simply putting a POV tag is not good form. --Cerejota 04:54, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Disruptive Talk Page editing

User:Mare Nostrum, or an IP address making edits that Mare Nostrum later claimed as his or her own, has twice broken the link to Archive 1 above in unrelated edits (cf. [42], [43]) and, in the latter edit, also deleted my comments under the heading of #Revisionist discussion. I have restored the deleted text and fixed the link. This is disruptive use of the Talk page and I do not understand why User:Mare Nostrum is doing it.

If these are mistakes on your part, Mare Nostrum, you need to realize that you're acting in a way that is disruptive, whether you intend to or not. Please don't delete text posted by other users, and please leave the archive link intact.

Radgeek 14:50, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Radgeek is such a pussy. I am ashamed to share the planet with someone whose mind is so easily programmed by words and so incapable of reality testing. Seminumerical 07:43, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

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